West v. City of Caldwell, No. 18-35300 (9th Cir. 2019)
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The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of qualified immunity to police officers in an action brought by plaintiff, seeking damages incurred during a SWAT team search of her house and alleging claims for unreasonable search, unreasonable seizure, and conversion.
The panel assumed, without deciding, that defendants violated plaintiffs' rights and held that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because those rights were not clearly established at the time. Given the factors that suggested voluntary consent, the panel held that a lack of consent was not clearly established and that a lack of consent was not so obvious that the requirement of similar precedent can be overcome. Furthermore, given that defendants thought they had permission to enter plaintiff's house to apprehend a dangerous, potentially
armed, and suicidal felon barricaded inside, it was not obvious, in the absence of a controlling precedent, that defendants exceeded the scope of plaintiff's consent by causing the tear gas canisters to enter the house in an attempt to flush the felon out into the open.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The panel reversed the district court’s order denying qualified immunity to police officers in an action alleging the officers violated plaintiff’s rights by coercing her consent to enter her house to search for a suspect and then by shooting tear gas canisters through the windows and causing extensive damage to the house. The panel assumed, without deciding, that plaintiff’s consent to Officer Richardson was not voluntary. The panel held that given the circumstances, including the amount of time that passed between Richardson’s threat to arrest plaintiff and his request for consent, the lack of voluntariness was not so clearly established such that Richardson would have known that plaintiff’s consent was not voluntary. Richardson was therefore entitled to qualified immunity on that claim. * The Honorable Eduardo C. Robreno, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation. WEST V. CITY OF CALDWELL 3 The panel held that assuming the consent was voluntary and defendants exceeded the scope of the consent by shooting tear gas into the house, they were still entitled to qualified immunity. The panel held that given that defendants thought they had permission to enter plaintiff’s house to apprehend a dangerous, potentially armed, and suicidal felon barricaded inside, it was not obvious, in the absence of a controlling precedent, that defendants exceeded the scope of plaintiff’s consent by causing the tear gas canisters to enter the house in an attempt to flush the suspect out into the open. Officers Seevers and Winefield were therefore entitled to qualified immunity on this claim. Addressing the reasonableness of defendants’ search, the panel held that given the unusual circumstances, the need for specificity of precedent in the Fourth Amendment context, and controlling cases establishing that officers can sometimes damage a home during a search without violating the occupant’s Fourth Amendment rights, this was not an obvious case in which to deny qualified immunity without any controlling precedent clearly establishing that defendants violated plaintiff’s rights. Defendants were therefore entitled to qualified immunity on this claim as well. Dissenting in part, Judge Berzon stated that in her view defendants Seevers and Winfield were not entitled to qualified immunity on the scope of consent claim. 4 WEST V. CITY OF CALDWELL
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